Monday, June 7, 2010

Jay and Vas have tea .

Jayata said “I do not seek the way, yet I am not confused. I do not pay obeisance to Buddha, yet I do not disregard Buddha either. I do not sit for long periods, yet I am not lazy. I do not limit my meals, yet I do not eat indiscriminately either. I am not contented, yet I am not greedy. When the mind does not seek anything, this is called the Way”

When Vasubandhu heard this, he discovered uncontaminated knowledge,
Manor asked Vasubandhu, “What is the enlightenment of the Buddha’s? Vasubandhu said, “It is the original nature of the mind?”

(From – Keizan’s Transmission of Light, ed Thomas Cleary)

           Vasubandhu is considered the 21st Patriarch of Zen. He is also considered one of the first Buddhist logicians, which I find rather strange myself. His work the “Method for Argumentation” is considered one of the first attempts at developing a system of formal logic for Buddhism. He was a well known and famous teacher of Theravadin Buddhism for years when he was converted to the Mahayana school, supposedly by his half brother Asanga. But all other things aside he and his brother Asanga are said to have co-founded the Yogachara school of Buddhism.
       Yogachara literally means “one whose practice is yoga”. But this school is sometimes called the mind only school because they argued that there is nothing that people experience that is not mediated by mind. This is a teaching which is in fact taught in the Dhammapada which is one of Buddhism’s earliest texts, said to be quoted from the Buddha himself. Supposedly the Madhyamaka school of Buddhism systematized by the great Nagarjuna, the 14th Patriarch of Zen, and the Yogacharins had their differences of opinion on this and that bit of philosophy. But in the end this has usually been found, in my opinion to be a case of hair splitting by later scholars.
             In the end sitting in meditation is the yoga of Vasubandhu, the yoga of Nagarjuna, and the way of Dogen and Keizan. This practice of sitting is the way of the Buddha and always has been.
            I think When Dogen tried to cut his way through 2000 years of Buddhist teaching and philosophy, when he tried to weed out the superfluous and the petty, wade through the bickering and the name calling, he always found sitting in meditation at the core of all the teachings.

              But for me the trick has always been to get up off the cushion and carry what I found there with me through out the day. This is what I would call a “Mountain Walking”. This may not be what Dogen ment by mountain walking but it has stuck with me as its meaning. For me it is the real Zen, when I am sitting even when I am standing and walking.

Or as Jay would say:

“I do not seek the way, yet I am not confused. I do not pay obeisance to Buddha, yet I do not disregard Buddha either. I do not sit for long periods, yet I am not lazy. I do not limit my meals, yet I do not eat indiscriminately either. I am not contented, yet I am not greedy. When the mind does not seek anything, this is called the Way”
    Yes you see Cherry what I mean when I say you can sometimes win the door prize, but simply not be able to do anything with it.

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